When people are financing homes with less than 20% down, they must have mortgage insurance. It comes in the form of government-backed FHA mortgage insurance or private mortgage insurance which is controlled by a few large companies. Those companies have had a rough road during the housing bust. Here’s the latest good news and bad [...]

Last week MetLife said they’re exiting the mortgage business. It’s big news in the retail loan origination world, so I thought I’d share how it impacts me as a mortgage banker and offer some advice to MetLife loan agents. This move is a bit surprising since MetLife didn’t make a major push in residential mortgages [...]

A big percentage of closing costs on purchase and refinance loans is title insurance. So here’s a quick primer. On a purchase, the borrower must buy two title insurance policies: one to protect them as the owner of the property, and one to protect the lender they’re using. All lenders require this. On a refinance, [...]

Which Bonds Are Mortgage Rates Tied To? Every investor in fixed-income securities has choices to make: U.S. Treasury debt, foreign bonds, corporate notes, etc. And each investor has limited capital, the supply of each of those is carefully monitored, and a large amount of one type can drive prices down and rates higher and compete [...]

What Do Manufacturing & Inflation Stats Mean? Economic stats often point to different economic trends, depending on one’s viewpoint. What difference do numbers like Industrial Production, Capacity Utilization, Producer Price Index, etc., mean for anyone in the mortgage business? Aside from moving rates around, last week we saw strength in manufacturing production (pushing commodity prices [...]

Financial Overhaul Roadmap For Regulators W.C. Fields once said, “Never try to impress a woman, because if you do she’ll expect you to keep up the standard for the rest of your life.” Standards are important to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), and it released the results of a study to help [...]

FBI Could Arrest Hundreds For Mortgage Fraud This week the the FBI could arrest hundreds for mortgage fraud. Charges are expected to be leveled over offenses ranging from pushing borrowers to lie about their income on mortgage applications to providing homeowners with false information about foreclosure rescue programs, the newspaper said. How Analysts Will Research [...]

Less Mortgage Volume, No Rate Spike Expected Mortgage traders are still reporting “below normal” trading volumes, whatever that means. Today we have already had the weekly MBA Mortgage Application Survey for the week ending May 28, which showed apps about flat but purchase apps falling for the 4th straight week. We all know that the [...]

Have A Roommate This Recession? You’re Not Alone The MBAA continues to churn out reports. The latest shows that in the four years (2005 through 2008) the US population increased by 3.4 million but that the number of households declined by 1.2 million. And if the number of households (demand) goes down, prices must drop [...]

New Bank Definition I thought I knew what a bank was, until those clever folks at the internet gave me something else to contemplate. Groundhog Day Predictions Worse Than Coin Toss Happy Groundhog Day. Few offices outside of Punxsutawney, PA use this as a holiday, whereby since 1887 if the groundhog (Punxsutawney Phil) sees his [...]